Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic

Quinones describes how the emergence of another dreamland in the 2000s—this time, a countrywide fantasy built on consumer debt and rising real estate values—was echoed by the entrenchment of a culture that believed relief from pain through nonaddictive opiates was possible. This contributed to a situation where the United States consumed 83% and 99% of oxycodone and hydrocodone, respectively, with opiates the most prescribed class of drugs. Meanwhile, overdose deaths had risen to one every 30 minutes by 2012. Only 2.4% of all Americans had abused OxyContin, but this was still enough “to throw hospitals, emergency rooms, jails, courts, rehab centers, and families into turmoil, especially in areas where abuse was new” (191). As people became addicted to OxyContin and their tolerance rose, they took higher doses and began injecting the drug for a stronger rush. From here, it was only a short jump to heroin use, causing the number of heroin users to nearly double from 2007 to 2011.

Part of this jump was due to the rise of pain clinics in places like Scioto County, Ohio, particularly Portsmouth. By this time, Portsmouth was in steep decline. The Dreamland pool had closed and was replaced by a mall; as the sense of community that Dreamland had represented ebbed away, opiates rose in popularity, and many of the town’s young people became addicted or used the surge of OxyContin addicts to make money, such as by taking out prescriptions at pill mills in their own name and selling the drugs on the street.